


Unforgettable

by witchymenace



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchymenace/pseuds/witchymenace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a short-lived affair, Damon won't let Bonnie forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unforgettable

The whole thing, the whole affair (Bonnie hates using this word, but it’s the only one that fits) lasted less than a month, beginning on the fourth of July and ending while Bonnie tosses and turned in her bed on the night of July 31st. Less than a month, but it might as well have been years. Bonnie thinks of that time period as the time when she discovered she had changed.  
  
\-----  
  
The fourth of July. Fireworks exploding overhead. One beer (although later she thought it must have been more). In the background, several weeks and months of teamwork, of tolerating each other rather than attempting to kill. Damon standing a little too close, the both of them a little too far away from anyone else. It began.  
  
\-----  
  
She ends it over the phone, because she doesn’t trust herself near him. It’s pathetic and she knows it. The most powerful witch for miles around can’t handle a face-to-face confrontation with one little Salvatore? He doesn’t even care about her, for God’s sake. Does she think he’ll fight to keep her?  
He doesn’t, of course. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, that this thing they’ve been doing is over. He laughs. In the background she can hear glasses tinkling and liquid pouring. It’s his usual nightcap- bourbon on the rocks. She hates herself for knowing that.  
“Whatever you say, Bon,” he says, and hangs up. She lets out a sigh of relief that’s been building up since the fourth of July.  
  
\-----  
  
His torture starts out subtly- well, as subtle as Damon can be. A few inappropriate jokes, a few innuendos. She expected as much.  
One day, she’s summoned to the Salvatore house along with Caroline and Tyler. The three of them meet with the Salvatores and Elena in the study, to discuss something about the Originals. Somehow, the group breaks up. Caroline and Tyler go off together; Stefan and Elena disappear. Damon and Bonnie are left alone, purportedly to do some kind of spell research. She pretends not to care, not even to notice when he edges up beside her.  
“I’ve been thinking,” he says.  
She doesn’t look up from her spellbook. “Have you hurt yourself?”  
“Why would I, when I’ve got you to do that for me?”  
She doesn’t smile.  
“You know, you used to laugh at my jokes. I guess you were in a better mood back then because of all the sex you were having.”  
“Shut up, Damon.”  
“We’ve got the house all to ourselves, Bonnie.”  
“I’m trying to read.”  
“No one will be back for hours. They’ll never know.”  
“That’s not the point.”  
“So you don’t care if people know?” She can hear the smile in his voice, even though she’s very deliberately not looking at him. “Well, that certainly changes things.”  
“It changes nothing, Damon.”  
“What would your friends say if they knew?”  
“They wouldn’t believe you.”  
“Why is that, Bon? Because a girl as good as you wouldn’t even go near me, right? Wouldn’t even think of it! So what does it mean that you did?”  
She turns a page in her spellbook. He laughs, right in her ear, and a shiver slides down her spine. His words creep into her brain, take firm root. As he walks away from her, sitting down on the couch in the middle of the room, she begins to wonder if he’s right.  
  
\-----  
  
A few weeks after the affair ends, Caroline asks Bonnie if she’s okay. According to her, Bonnie has been keeping to herself more than usual.  
Bonnie tries to come up with a satisfying answer, but she can’t think of a way to tell the whole truth. She can’t just say what had happened without telling everything- how it feels like there are marks on her flesh, like his body left an indelible print on her skin that will never come off. He burned himself into her, and now every time she looks at herself all she can see is the permanent reminder of him. What they did, what she let him do, what she did to him. How she liked it. How she loved it.  
She can’t explain this to Caroline, so she doesn’t. She says something about being tired, about working really hard to figure out a particular spell. Caroline has a look on her face like she doesn’t quite believe it, but she backs off anyway. Bonnie is grateful for that, sort of.  
  
\-----  
  
Bonnie’s research is more successful when she’s away from Damon. She reads about a witch living a few cities away, one who might be able to help out with her plan. Unfortunately, Bonnie makes the mistake of telling everyone about this woman. Elena says that Damon and Bonnie should go there together, and no one is looking at Damon when she says this, so no one sees the way he grins. Everyone is staring at Bonnie, whose face tightens at the idea of being alone in a car with Damon. She’s not scared of him, of course. But she can’t say no. She can’t let anyone think that something’s changed between them.  
Bonnie nods and walks out the door. Damon follows. He gets to the car before she does- that damned vampire speed- and opens the door for her, like a proper gentleman. She feels tempted to get into the backseat, just to spite him. But she doesn’t. She gets in and he gets in. Damon pulls out of the driveway.  
  
\-----  
  
The trip is an hour long and Bonnie is counting the minutes when Damon finally starts in on her.  
“We had some good times in this car, didn’t we, Bonnie?” he says. “Well, we had good times everywhere we could.”  
She’s stony-faced silence, staring out the window, waiting for him to get bored of this line of questioning and just give up. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, a smirk on his face.  
“Don’t you remember, Bon-Bon? What about the time at that party- some Carol Lockwood mayoral something- where it was just you, me and a nice dark closet? Or, even better- the time at the house when Stefan almost caught us?”  
The scenery here is nice. All fields and trees and infinite sky. Clouds are gathering on the horizon. She wonders if it will rain.  
“Let me refresh your memory, then. You came over after dinner. I had you for dessert.” He laughs. “I do love a pun.”  
“Shut up, Damon,” she mumbles.  
“I still had blood on my mouth. You loved it, Bon.”  
“Don’t call me that.”  
“It’s never bothered you bef-”  
His words are cut off with a groan as pain tears through his head. Damon’s face contorts in agony and his hands spasm on the steering wheel, so much so that the car swerves into the other lane for a moment. The pain Bonnie inflicted recedes from his brain and he pulls the car back into position. Damon glances over at her. She hasn’t even twitched.  
“You and your aneurysms, Bonnie,” he mutters.  
“Me and my aneurysms,” she says quietly.  
  
\-----  
  
They talk to the witch and they come home empty-handed. Damon is silent the whole way home. Of course he is, Bonnie thinks. He’s too busy moping. She knows about his daydreams, his idle fantasies, even though he never told her about them. She knows that he imagines an alternate reality where he is with Elena. She knows that he left the house this morning expecting to come home clutching the answer to their problems in his hands, and that maybe Elena would hug him, and maybe once she saw what a valiant crusader he was, she’d realize that she had been with the wrong Salvatore all along. The thought makes Bonnie laugh out loud.  
“What’s so funny?” Damon asks sourly.  
“Nothing,” she says, and sighs. She hates that she knows these things about him. She wonders if he knows anything similar about her.  
  
\-----  
  
Bonnie lives in fear for weeks, for months. She knows that at any moment, Damon could tell Elena or Caroline or anyone about their relationship. And no matter what she tells herself, they would probably believe him, eventually.  
But he doesn’t say a word- at least, not to anyone else. The comments and innuendos and sly remarks about her body or that dark corner slow to a trickle, and when they come, they’re without the usual malice. Bonnie figures it out after a while. She sees how Elena is moving away from Stefan and closer to Damon. And she knows Damon wouldn’t be stupid enough to mess that up by telling her the truth.  
  
\-----  
  
Several months after the affair began and ended is the real end, the proper end, the severing of any remaining ties. It’s some Mystic Falls event- there are so many, Bonnie can’t even remember which one this is. She’s standing in the dining room of the Lockwood mansion, holding a glass of champagne and looking for anyone she knows. When she turns around, Damon is there in front of her.  
“Bonnie,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you.”  
She looks over his shoulder, sees Elena standing in the doorway, talking to someone.  
“I know why you’re here.”  
He turns around, follows her gaze to Elena. When he turns back to her he seems almost embarrassed, somehow.  
“So we understand each other.”  
“I won’t say a word,” she confirms. “And neither will you. But you shouldn’t keep secrets, Damon.”  
“And neither should you,” he says.  
Damon raises his glass, and Bonnie clinks hers against it. He nods at her and walks away. She watches him offer his arm to Elena; she watches them disappear into the crowd. Until that moment, she had not realized that he still had a hold on her. She only realizes it now because the hold disappears. She drains the rest of her glass. Inside of her, the remaining shame and fear and self-hate disappears, popping like so many champagne bubbles.


End file.
